The Blue Moon Review

Heaven
by Aaron Anstett


          "I will clamber through the Clouds and exist."
               --Keats, Letters

Stepladders at fireworks, he explains, help eliminate
the middleman, the sky between the lights' flare
and his eyeballs.  He's that much closer,

perched, to the sulfur, corneas nearer
the sizzle and spill.  "On a dance floor,
I don't want to move my body, that vehicular

spectacle, just proclaim my thanks and glee,
afterwards, in bed.  Any restaurant, I want already
to be full.  Here, I'd forfeit the ghastly for the ghost,

the shadow for its source, and climb
the standby hook-and-ladder
past the cyclone-fenced restricted zone.

I will clamber through the clouds and exist,
the flashing din and nimbus a neighbor.
I could stand and face it, but, astride a high rung,

I turn to make out the faces, some giddy
and soft as a family's, grinning around the cake,
or wearing the bleary, livid shock of last call.

One of those expressions might be yours.
A look spreads across your face of concern
as you see me back-lit and distant.

Imagine me then as looking into the open face of heaven.
Pretend it's weeks ago, before you've met me.
No one's yet prepared the fairgrounds.

I'm practicing balance in the back yard,
my own height off the earth.
Between bursts, think of the quiet, the lyrical, wind."